


oh, come on be alive again

by girljustdied



Category: Daredevil (TV), The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-27
Updated: 2017-11-27
Packaged: 2019-09-30 18:16:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17228825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/girljustdied/pseuds/girljustdied
Summary: "girls don’t masturbate over their teen idols."  "they don’t?" "no, they make up more intricate, schematic plans. girls are a lot more complex than boys."





	oh, come on be alive again

The new apartment fills up. What should take years of nesting happens in months. Used books, worn pages housing scribbled notes or old receipts serving as makeshift bookmarks, fill up her shelves. Art on the walls. She frames ticket stubs, and articles she likes, and recipes—a few photographs. The overhead lighting is too harsh, so she fills the space with lamps. Paints the cabinets in her kitchen green.

It’s a home no one else has ever stepped into. 

“Wow,” her voice cracks. It’s a Sunday night, and she hasn’t spoken in almost forty-eight hours.

There’s still the bedroom to focus on. Units of time. She wallpapers one wall, something floral, yellow. She peels it back off. 

“Leftover green paint it is,” she murmurs to herself. The sound is small, not much louder than the music from the bar across the street drifting through the open windows. 

When she was fifteen, she’d painted her bedroom blue. Used the edging brush to scrawl the name of a boy she liked on the wall before rolling over it. She can’t remember his name, not even when she closes her eyes and tries to visualize the shapes of the letters. Something with a “J,” maybe.

Allows herself a few tears and a drink, then another. Sleeps on the couch.

When a freelance photographer for the paper asks her out, she says, “No.”

-

She pictures Frank’s body next to hers in bed. The weight of it, the scrape of his skin. Night after night. The times he’d jerk awake, mind in another country—another time—, voice hoarse as he cries out. And her, exhausted, crawling into his lap to hold him in place. Hands on his temples and in his hair, _It’s okay, it’s okay, I’m here. We’re safe._

In the cool light of the morning, she wonders what he would have to say about that little fantasy. 

He sees right through her, and doesn’t. Always black-eyed, knuckles raw, thumb tracing the lip of a coffee cup. _You’re soothing yourself, ma’am. Not me._

Her cheeks would prickle with a light blush, she’d bite her lip. _No, that’s not it._

_No?_

_No, Frank._

She’s getting off.

-

The work is never finished. The low-level hum of a mind on the edge of a migraine. Ellison suggests noise-cancelling headphones, but the pair she buys sit unused in a drawer. Can’t risk missing the crack of a bullet leaving its chamber, or murmurs concerning her associations. An overhead light breaks in her office late one night and she never requests a replacement. 

There must have been a time in her life when it would have felt like a burden—the lack of a sense of completion, her life sucked up, and spit out, and the world enduring. Peonies on a grave.

One murder, and another, and another. 

“It’s hard to explain,” there’s no one left to tell. “I think that I’ve always had a sense for how the world works—the heaviness of it. The way it all interlinks. You know? But since I’ve come to this city, since I’ve started writing, it’s worse. More specific.”

Ellison listens, in his way. Voice even, “Soon enough it’ll all blur together, Page. You don’t need to spend the time you do on all the parties involved—you’re not a criminal psychologist, you’re a reporter.”

“But people are so singular,” she argues with an empty room. “Shouldn’t they—shouldn’t their crimes be seen that way, too?”

“It’s all the same to the dead.” And then, in her hands, a folder holding a new assignment for _The Bulletin_ , “Don’t forget that.”

Five people have been slain in Little Italy. In her purse is a recorder, a notebook, three pens, a pencil, chapstick, two condoms, painkillers, her phone, wallet, keys, and a .380 pistol.

-

Frank, in the kitchen, cleaning her gun.

She sprawls across the length of her couch, back curved over the armrest. In bed she’d dip into sleep in a matter of minutes, but here she can close her eyes and imagine the sounds for hours: the cloth on metal, the scratch of the brush, his breath. The tread of his boots on the hardwood as he moves towards her room. Nights she keeps the weapon in her bedside table. 

His voice would be a low note that thrums at the base of her own throat, _You need to take better care of that._

_I clean it after use._ And then, pointedly, _I’m just not out there firing it everyday. Not like you._

_Fair enough._ Pulls a gun from the back of his waistband and, holding it by the muzzle, offers it to her. _Show me what you do._

It’s not the same model. She tells him so.

_Yeah, I don’t imagine this would fit in your purse, huh?_

Her body heavy, _Frank, I’m tired._

_All right,_ he’d say, and pick her up.

-

The days after Matt’s death are not any different from the ones following the dissolution of Nelson and Murdock. They don’t speak. Foggy texts once a month, suggesting they meet for dinner and then not pushing when she gives an excuse. A framed picture of the three of them from her last apartment rests in a box in her closet.

She still remembers their coffee orders. But she also remembers the type of pens they used at Union Allied, and the sound of blood in her brother’s voice, and hours of hiding in a broom closet—dreaming of somewhere far, far away.

All of it happened. And, somehow, none of it.

The bar across the street from her bedroom window is a hangout for local cops. The music is too loud late into the night. There’s nothing she can do about it. At one in the morning she pulls on a dress and a coat and goes downstairs for a drink. She’ll take home the first person to talk to her. This time, she will.

Miguel is young, a rookie cop with a crooked grin and close-cropped dark hair. Calls her “Ma’am” with a wink.

“Are you trying not to get laid tonight, sir?” she grits her teeth but manages to tease.

He buys her a beer, and tries to buy her another. 

Hand on his thigh, she politely declines, “Let’s get out of here.”

They kiss messily as he closes out his tab, detaching only to halfway prepare for winter night outside, both of their coats still hanging open. It’s colder than when she first left the apartment, but the slope of his back is warm under his jacket. 

“Where do you wanna go?” his exhales a fog in the air around them.

“My place—” with every step towards her building, her feet hesitate. She searches out her window, a wild, jittery feeling expanding in her breast, “my place is kind of far.” Swallows, “How about we go to yours?”

-

_Where were you?_

In the daydream she isn’t repelled by the threat he presents. The twitches of the muscles of his jaw, his trigger finger, the growl in his words. Sheds her coat and shoes and is halfway out of her dress before she steps into her bedroom. _Out._

He’d stay put, only his voice following her, _No shit._

_I met a guy in a bar, we went to his place._ To his silence, _We fucked—is that what you want to hear?_

He’s standing in the doorway, leaning, arms crossed over his chest as he watches her tug on a loose t-shirt to catch a few hours of sleep in. Asks, _You okay?_

The breath she’d been holding rushes out all at once.

_Yeah._ She needs sleep, but there’s something still too awake in her. _It was—it was nice to be close to someone. The sex was,_ searching for the right word, the most accurate, teeth gnawing at her bottom lip, _inconclusive._

There are laugh lines in the corners of his eyes. _Yeah, I bet._

Where has he been, that’s the real question. _Sometimes when I look out the window, I wonder if you’re looking back at me._

He sighs, _I know._

-

The first contact in months is not what she had expected. No frantic knocking on her door, or a call in the dark of night, no blood. It’s near _The Bulletin_ ’s offices, so he must not know where she lives now. 

Frank tells her as much when her pace slows to a stop. “New spot?”

“Yeah,” she leads him past the doorman and into an elevator. “I can barely afford the rent, but there’s a guard in the lobby and I’m fourteen floors up.” She takes in the length of his hair, the beard, the oversize duffel he’s carrying. Throat tight, the words choke out high-pitched, “I know that wouldn’t mean much to a man with your skillset, but—”

Shakes his head minutely, “No, it’s good. It’s good, Karen.” The bell of the elevator rings, and his attention flicks to the doors opening.

“It’s strange.”

“What’s that?” He’s scouting the hallway.

She follows him for a beat, but then brushes past to lead towards her unit with a huff of impatience, “Hearing you say my name.”

There are three deadbolts on her door. A part of her daily life. One, two, three, and in—one, two, three, again. 

One, two, and her hand twitches, key hovering over the third lock. She takes a breath and inserts the key carefully, the vibration of the ridges slotting into the mechanism magnified by the focus it takes to keep her breathing even. Flinches at the sound of the bolt pulling back.

He finally speaks up: “You ever, uh, ever rehearsed a conversation with someone?” Continues, voice light, obviously attempting to calm her. She hadn’t realized she’d needed it until she hears the change, “You know, in your head.”

“Of course.” She turns to face him, key ring held tight in her fist. “Sometimes out loud, even.”

A step back, palms angling up slightly to remind her they’re empty, and, “I guess I’ve thought of what to say to you.” Breaks eye contact, “Thought about it enough times I got used to it.”

She watches him not watch her for a long moment. He looks good, he looks— “And the best you ended up with as a starting point was panhandling on Tenth and Thirty-Seventh?”

His mouth quirks up, “Worked, didn’t it?”

“I guess it depends on what you’re after, Frank?”

He meets her gaze again, sobered by her question, “Look, can we talk inside?”

She lets him in. Would typically hang her things in the closet in the cramped foyer, but with Frank behind her she’s propelled forward. Unbuttons her jacket as she walks and tosses it over the edge of the couch.

She needs a drink. Her feet ache.

-

There is just enough alcohol in her home to get well and truly drunk. She deserves it. Sucked into a homeland security investigation, Frank begging her to back off, cut ties, and—

If he were here, now, she’d press a kiss to his cheek. _Not so easy to take, is it?_

She knows his shoulders, his chest, the set of his hips and the smell of his sweat. Strange to know a body so well that she had never undressed.

_That’s war_ , he tells her.

She wants to imagine a softness in the lines of his face, plying her with glasses of water, telling her, _You wanna feel like shit tomorrow, Karen? C’mon, drink up._ Wants to sleep.

Her lips draw to his, mouth parting to suck in his exhales. 

_Don’t do that,_ a hand gentle in the hair at the nape of her neck.

She kisses him once, and again when he responds in kind. And again. Peels his sweater off his body and kisses his chest—the spot over his heart.

_Don’t do that, Karen._

She can admit that it’s not enough to simply know that he’s alive. She can admit that.

-

The days are all the same. There are no roses on her windowsill. The news tells her that Frank Castle is dead. Again. For Thanksgiving she declines a halfhearted offer to eat with Ellison’s family, and doesn’t hear from Foggy, and doesn’t visit Matt’s grave, or Ben’s. She orders Thai food she barely eats and drinks one beer, and another, and passes out on the couch reading _For Whom the Bell Tolls_.

She covers for everyone else at the paper through the December holidays. Writes her first movie review, and pens answers for an advice column for a week, and attends a protest at Columbus Circle.

“I owe you,” Sofia from Classifieds exclaims, “I hope you like panettone, because you’re gonna be getting a shitload of it!”

The freezing air feels sharp in her lungs as she lugs a Douglas fir back to her apartment to decorate. She makes hot cocoa and strings lights through the branches, the needles scratching up her skin. There are no gifts for under the tree.

When Craig, that freelance photographer asks her out again for New Years, she says, “Yes.”

The champagne pops at ten and doesn’t stop flowing. She drinks just enough to feel bubbly, and sweet, and doesn’t mind her date’s arm slung around her waist or the way he kisses her at midnight. Takes a cab home, alone. The instant she switches on a light in her apartment, her phone buzzes with a call from an unknown number. Any notion that it might be Craig is wiped away by the rasp of another man’s voice. 

“Frank.” She can’t think of anything else to say.

“Wanted to tell you happy new year.”

“Oh yeah?” already too affected, eyes stinging. “What about Thanksgiving, Frank? Christmas? Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday—”

“Yeah, all that.”

Her sigh is more of a laugh, delirious, “Where are you?”

“Downstairs,” he doesn’t hesitate.

Neither does she: “Do you want to come up?”

“Yeah, okay.”

She doesn’t move from her foyer, still bundled up, mind crowded with too many disparate thoughts. The space is too small to pace in. After a few minutes of paralysis, he knocks, and she lets him in, and she takes his coat without a word. 

He helps with her jacket when she turns from him to slide it off, his hands on the lapels and pulling, his brow touching the curve of skin underneath her ear. It’s too much. She leans back against him heavily as he presses her to the wall, her coat trapped at the swell of her biceps. Palms against concrete, she breathes with effort, inhales shorter than her exhales. 

They’ve gone too far without speaking. She can’t now—the silence is a thread she has to pull, and pull, and maybe at the end—

He makes a soft, soothing sound, his mouth open and hot against her neck. His body swells into hers with each exhalation, a hand drops to her hip. Lowering her arms to her sides, she turns to face him, the jacket slipping off to pool at their feet. Does not expect his mouth crushing to hers, parting to taste her. Had anticipated having to make all the moves, to push, and push—

Grasps the fabric of his gray sweatshirt at his shoulders with two hands and forces him back, heart hammering in her chest.

He studies her expression carefully, her dress—black, short—, her legs as she steps out of her heels. She assumes he watches her back as she leaves him in the foyer and moves through the short hall to the living room, stopping short of the bedroom. He follows.

Standing a few feet in front of her, he kneels, gaze dropping. Unlaces one boot, then the other. Stands to step out of them and bows again halfway to pull off his socks. Grasps the bottom edge of his sweater and lifts it over this head. Thumbs open the button of his jeans, slides down the zipper, then takes off both his pants and boxer briefs at once with little fanfare. When he meets her eyes again, his pupils are dark and blown wide.

She feels drunk. Takes swaying steps forward to press a palm below his belly button, drags it up the musculature of his stomach, fingertips digging in. He leans forward to kiss the apple of her cheek, the corner of her mouth, and she lets go.

A growl, and he’s lifting her up with one hand on her side and the other under the swell of her ass to set her on the back edge of the couch. Reaches under her bunched up dress and yanks down her underwear—there’s a gasp at that, and it must be hers. He moves between her legs and their bodies slot together, twisting and bending to pull closer. She’s wheezing, hands trembling as they clutch at his bicep, the back of his head.

She cannot communicate the rush of synapses firing in her mind—the intense longing and the repulsion, the fear. His hand on his cock as he guides himself into her, that’s real. That’s too—

She has to hold on to not fall back, one leg hooked over his hip and the other with the foot bracing against the couch, arms gripped tight around his neck as he trusts.

“Don’t—” she pants, but when he slows, she moves more forcefully around him, “don’t come in me, don’t—”

He groans roughly and pulls out, pumping his dick through the rest of his orgasm, cum on her dress and her thighs.

“Sorry,” she tells him, “I’m—” 

He hushes her, head heavy on her collar bone and hands on either side of her on the back of the couch. 

She basks in the growing silence as his body comes down. Reaches between them and touches herself, middle and index finger swiping up the wetness from her vagina to rub at her clit with firm, quick strokes.

It’s the first time she’s masturbated to Frank. Closes her eyes and focuses on the scrape of his stubble.

She’s glad he’s there. Makes her feel less alone.


End file.
